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Next adventure: Mandarin - 鹊 TAC’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 57 of 128 05 June 2013 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
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My first 17 Chinese Characters in this journey:
一二三十口日几也不木机杯人他力女她 "Learning Chinese Characters" is a great book, for me, because I'm a big mnemonics fan. There is some good research supporting the value of mnemonics for language learning, although, of course, it may not work for everybody. However, it's sad to read pedantic comments like "these mnemonics employ ridiculous stories". Well, these are the most memorable mnemonics. I'll try to study one chapter every day for the next seven days. If my results with the SRS testing go well, maybe next week I'll start "Méthode 90".
I work in the University, which means that I've got the discount. I'm entering each character "by hand" writing them, a very good exercise. So far, I'm using four "profiles". The hardest one is the "Productive": from English to character plus sound and tone. A mistake in any of these and the card will be marked as wrong. The second hardest is the "Receptive": from character to meaning plus sound an tone. There're two other profiles, one for tones another for stroke order. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 58 of 128 06 June 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some mnemonics also require that you (L2 English speaker) learn uncommon words ... shillelagh? jonquil? WTH!!??
Anyway, for me, it's much easier to memorize the sound associated to each meaning, which makes the character and tone clues the most important parts of these mnemonics. Indeed, sometimes I already knew very well the sound-meaning association, like in the cases of shillelagh (shì 是: to be, etc.) and jonquil (zhong 中: middle). This book and method are great, forget the whining above :-)) Edited by Flarioca on 06 June 2013 at 3:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 59 of 128 12 June 2013 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I've read the first 6 chapters from LCC.
So far, eight days, 93 characters, 18 of which not on the HSK A 800 characters list. LCC counts only 75 characters in these chapters, the others are "65a" and so forth. These characters are: 一, 二, 三, 十, 口, 日, 几, 也, 不, 木, 机, 杯, 人, 他, 力, 女, 她, 子, 好, 个, 八, 儿, 白, 勺, 的, 四, 文, 这, 门, 们, 止, 正, 是, 手, 戈, 我, 中, 么, 什, 五, 七, 九, 六, 百, 边, 卜, 上, 下, 马, 吗, 妈, 厶, 大, 太, 夫, 小, 尔, 你, 又, 友, 土, 地, 地, 在, 云, 运, 动, 会, 王, 玉, 国, 月, 朋, 有, 未, 妹, 来, 了, 了, 兄, 兑, 说, 吾, 语, 夕, 多, 名, 外, 刀, 分, 至, 到, 倒. Of course, I'm coming back to read again some mnemonics and will come back to read again many others. Anyway, I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to memorize so well (above 84% of active retention) characters, sounds, tones and meanings without the help of these mnemonics. For sure, I wouldn't be able to do that without much more time dedicated to learn them. I'm using Pleco as SRS system, which simplifies a lot the whole process of creating the cards, adding sounds (already in the app, if you pay for it), making different tests (productive, receptive, tones, stroke order, among others) etc. In the beginning of LCC, we are told that one should study at least chapters 1 to 6, before starting to pick characters in a non sequential (bookwise) order. The reason is that only after that the whole set of procedures and conventions adopted in the book are fully explained. That said, I'll start "Méthode 90" tomorrow, also because we all know very well that context helps a lot to retain language informations. Edited by Flarioca on 12 June 2013 at 2:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 60 of 128 13 June 2013 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I was looking for an app to practice writing the Chinese characters. It was already decided that I wouldn't use Skritter, for two main reasons: I don't want to pay anything forever in order to use it and I don't want to use another flashcard system, Pleco and Anki should be enough.
However, none of these two could help me to train the writing in a good way. After reading some nice opinions about Estroke here in HTLAL, on Chinese-Foruns and on Pleco Forum I've decided to buy it. This at least very close to my dream app for the write training. First lesson from "Méthode 90" completed. I enjoyed it, but it seems wiser to wait before saying much more about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 61 of 128 15 June 2013 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
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During the MT course, we learn the difference between 都不 and 不都, the first meaning "none" and the second "not all". At that time, not knowing the respective characters and not wanting "to put the plough in front of the oxen", I didn't read about this subject in any of my Mandarin grammars.
Today, I've decided to look for that on "Yufa", "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar" and "Basic Patterns". Only in Yufa I could easily find complete (straightforward and clear) explanation about that, which already makes it my favourite basic grammar book, so far. Of course, not very fair to be based on such a prosaic problem ... but that's how we often make choices. Besides that, Yufa has exercises, which seems good to me at this point, and MMCG has traditional characaters, which makes it less valuable for me, because I don't want to learn them now, although I certainly respect and understand those who want to do that. However, MMCG is said to be more thorough and I'll possibly need it in the near future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 62 of 128 19 June 2013 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll wait until the end of lesson 5 to talk more about "Méthode 90", but it seems that this has been a very good move.
Many, many years ago, I bought the book "Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary". I thought that this book would be helpfull only after a lot of study about Chinese characters, but now it seems a quite good resource even at early stages. Moreover, their site is awesome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 63 of 128 21 June 2013 at 3:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Once more, "Yufa!" explains something about which "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar" gives little help.
I was trying to discover more about the differences between 什么 and 哪, which are discussed very quickly on lesson 4 of "Méthode 90". I'm sure that this will get more clear in the future, but some hints help to keep the road clear. On the other hand, I need to work harder on the memorization of tones. Meaning and characters are becoming much easier to retain than tones. One of the problems is that I've read some characters but not listened to them so far. The other problem is that my "ear" is not yet good to tones. EDIT: It should be added to "not listened to" the clarificarion "in context". Of course, we can listen to all these basic characters in Pleco, among many other places. Edited by Flarioca on 21 June 2013 at 3:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5883 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 64 of 128 27 June 2013 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Today I've decided to browse some random (and not so random) Mandarin Wikipedia pages, just for fun. Of course, I still cannot understand anything. However, it's already a completely new feeling when you are able, at least, to recognize some few characters and words.
I hope to start reading "Susan you mafan" next month. Looking at some random pages, it's clear that I'm not so far from recognizing most of the characters. This book uses only 207 unique characters. I'm close to this number, although it's unlikely that they'll be the same 207 ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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